Video games help combat obesity

By Jill Barker, Postmedia NewsDecember 8, 2011

What a difference a couple of years have made in the world of video gaming. Once criticized for luring kids away from the playground and onto the couch, video games are now being touted as a possible solution to the rising level of obesity among children.

This change of heart is related to the transformation of video gaming from a sedentary activity to one where physical activity is not only encouraged, it's required. Kids are on their feet running, kicking, skipping, jumping and dancing, as well as playing sports like tennis and boxing, all in front of a TV set.

Initially most fitness and health professionals pooh-poohed the idea that exer-gaming sparked enough activity or intensity to be defined as exercise. But there's no denying that the latest generation of video games is getting kids moving like never before. Better yet, kids are exercising voluntarily and without parental involvement or adult supervision, which goes a long way toward realizing the 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity exercise children and youth are to accumulate daily.

So, with lots to study, researchers started examining just how much exercise is involved in exer-gaming and whether it has the potential to whittle away at the ever-expanding waistlines of today's kids.

Elaine Biddiss and Jennifer Irwin, of Toronto's Bloorview Research Institute, took a look at those studies and pulled out 18 relevant research articles examining energy expenditure during exer-gaming. Their report, which was published in July 2010, noted that although exercise intensity varied greatly among the games studied, most children and youth exercised in the light to moderate range (equivalent to brisk walking) while gaming. And despite periodic high-intensity bursts of energy, vigorous activity was rarely sustained for any significant period of time.

The review, which featured studies published from 1998 -2010, also reported that games demanding more upper body movement like tennis and bowling required significantly less energy expenditure than games involving both upper and lower body movement like Dance, Dance Revolution.

A year later a study published by Bruce Bailey and Kyle McInnis, showed different results. The two researchers, who tracked the activity levels of 39 children 9-13 years of age while playing six popular exer-games, reported that vigorous-level activity was actually commonplace among the gamers.

"Based on the finding of our study, energy expenditure was elevated to a moderate to vigorous intensity level for all the activities evaluated," stated Bailey and McInnis. "There was a fourfold to eight-fold increase in energy expenditure above rest for the various forms of gaming. Exer-gaming compared favourably with walking on a treadmill at three miles per hour, with four out of the six activities resulting in higher energy expenditure."

Bailey and McInnis explained that their study was designed to maximize energy expenditure from each of the games tested, which is one of the reasons their results were so different than those reviewed by Biddiss. Like Biddiss however, they noted that exercise intensity varied considerably from game to game.

"These findings demonstrate that game choice and level selection, as well as the gaming environment, can influence how much energy is expended while playing exergames," stated Bailey and McInnis.

Biddiss was impressed but not surprised by the study.

"The findings of Bailey and McInnis are exciting," Biddiss said in an interview. "They examined a greater range of games than have been investigated in the past in a single study. The games selected were typically the more active ones requiring more body movement and specifically more lower body movement, which is important for energy expenditure."

So does that mean you shouldn't feel guilty about heeding your child's request for a new video game this Christmas? Well, the tide is certainly changing when it comes to the endorsement of video games as a healthy activity. With more and more research suggesting that video gaming isn't as sedentary as it once was and that given the right game and video game system it could actually qualify as exercise, it may be okay to put a video game under the tree.

"Screen time is highly valued by kids and if we can replace some of their passive screen time with active screen time using active video games, then that will be a step in the right direction," said Biddiss.

That said, health and fitness professionals caution that exer-gaming shouldn't replace other forms of exercise. In fact, playing hours of video games in the basement is still considered too sedentary for kids and adults alike. Another caution is that most of the studies were short term which means that the data was obtained during those heady few weeks when the games were new and enthusiasm high.

After a few months, however, kids may become bored with the game and slow down their frequency of use or find a short cut that demands less physical effort (it wasn't long before children realized that a flick of the wrist achieved the same results as full-body gaming in many of the Wii Sports games).

So proceed with caution when it comes to endorsing video gaming. Invest in games and technology that promote active play and phase out games were thumbs do all the work.

"At the end of the day, the potential of active video games for activity promotion and energy expenditure really hinges on how kids use them," Biddiss said.

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